Trump is watching Australia's decision on Palestine. Does it matter?
'The president has, in his career, paid particular attention to the Anglosphere,' he says. 'I'm sure he'll be looking to see how our friends line up.'
Wilkie knows Trump well. He served in his first cabinet as secretary for veterans affairs, and is now at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. We are speaking in his office just a stone's throw from the White House.
'He [Trump] has been decrying the position of our major Western allies when it comes to the issue of Israel and Gaza,' Wilkie says.
'I think he looks at these leaders as appeasing the hard left of their polities, as he would say the Democratic Party is [doing] in this country, and they do nothing with their statements other than encourage the leadership of Hamas to carry on in the hopes that somehow this kind of rhetoric will sway the United States to tell [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to stop. They're the professional peace agitators.'
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Wilkie also knows Australia well and indicates Labor's actions are being closely watched in Washington. The assumption is that Canberra will follow the path of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has said his country will recognise Palestine unless Israel takes substantive steps to peace.
'We're seeing more movement within the Labor Party to force the prime minister to go down the road that Mr Starmer has gone, and I think it will happen in the next few weeks,' Wilkie says.
'There's enough agitation on the left of Labor in Australia and in the streets of the major cities that he will do what Starmer has done with his backbenchers in Labour.'
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